60 national geographic • september 2016
Kathi Lefebvre is talking about the whales
as we crunch across a windy, rocky beach, 200
miles north of Kodiak. In a typical year eight
whales are found dead in the western Gulf of
Alaska. But in 2015 at least a dozen popped
up in June alone, their bodies so buoyant that
gulls used them as fishing platforms. All sum-
mer the Pacific Ocean heaved rotting remains
into rocky coves along the more than 1,000-
mile stretch from Anchorage to the Aleutian
Islands. Whole families of brown bears feasted
on their carcasses.
Lefebvre, a research scientist at NOAA’s
Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle,
Washington, had examined eye fluid from one
of the carcasses in a failed attempt to winnow
the cause of death. Now the two of us are on
HE first fin whale
appeared in Marmot
Bay, where the sea curls
a crooked finger around
Alaska’s Kodiak Island.
A biologist spied the
calf drifting on its side,
as if at play. Seawater
flushed in and out of
its open jaws. Spray washed over its slack pink
tongue. Death, even the gruesome kind, is usu-
ally too familiar to spark alarm in the wild north.
But late the next morning, the start of Memorial
Day weekend, passengers aboard the ferry Ken -
nicott spotted another whale bobbing nearby.
Her blubber was thick. She looked healthy. But
she was dead too.
T
By Craig Welch
Photographs by Paul Nicklen